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Zecora: Tales of crops and harvests consumed. If these creatures are in Ponyville... you're doomed.

Written by M.A. Larson

Fluttershy is wandering around near the Everfree Forest, picking flowers to present to Princess Celestia for her upcoming visit the next day. However, as she's about to head back to Ponyville, she's startled by a tiny, adorable, fly-like creature. She offers it an apple, only for it to eat an entire bucketful in an instant. Her reaction? Fawn over its adorableness and take it with her to show off to her friends.

Meanwhile, back in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle is overseeing preparations, making sure everything is proceeding flawlessly. Which, barring a few details, seems to be going quite well. However, when she checks on the progress of the food over at the Sugarcube Corner, she is dismayed to find Pinkie Pie devouring everything under the pretense of taste-testing. Twilight's about to give her a piece of her mind when Fluttershy barges in. Fluttershy shows them her new pet, only to find that two others like it have shown up out of nowhere. Twilight's more than happy to adopt one, but Pinkie is surprisingly intolerant:

Moving on, Twilight checks in at Rarity's shop to see how the outfits are coming along, and finds Rainbow Dash there, reluctantly modeling. Twilight's new pet shows itself and...wait a minute; there's three of them again! Fortunately, Rainbow Dash and Rarity are more than willing to each take one for themselves. Pinkie bursts in, asking for help in finding an accordion, but leave in a huff when the girls are too overwhelmed by the creatures' inherent cuteness to give her any heed.

Nothing major happens for the rest of the day, and everyone goes to sleep for some well-deserved rest for tomorrow's celebration...

However, the next day, everyone's in for a rude awakening when they find that their new pets have greatly multiplied overnight. They proceed to make a mess of Twilight's room, get a little too affectionate with Rainbow Dash, and gross out Rarity by showing her how they reproduce. Pinkie shows up again, but soon runs off after remarking that she's going to need a lot more instruments. Twilight, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash soon meet up; they head to Fluttershy's to see if she could help keep them under control, only to find her under a flood of parasprites.

Twilight begins to panic, fearing the worst if they can't get the bugs under control before Celestia arrives. Applejack then shows up with a cart full of apples (which gets promptly eaten), and soon joins their cause. They manage to herd the swarm into the Everfree forest, only to find another swarm at Fluttershy's because she had secretly kept one for herself. Rainbow Dash generates a tornado to whisk them away, but it gets interrupted when Pinkie's new cymbals get sucked in, raining the insects over Ponyville. Tensions escalate when Pinkie Pie is obsessed with finding instruments instead of helping the others, resulting in the herd outright ignoring her due to Princess Celestia's impending arrival.

Over in Ponyville, the bugs have descended and are eating every food and crop, causing Applejack to run back home to protect her farm. Twilight casts a spell on the creatures to get them to stop eating the food. It works, but now they've started eating everything else instead... buckets... tents... lampposts... everything. Panicking, the ponies break off to defend their homes, only to find themselves helpless against the horde. Twilight snatches a parasprite and rushes to Zecora for help, but the zebra can only tell her that they're doomed.

As Twilight rushes back to Ponyville, she spots the Princess already on her way from the castle. The town itself is a wreck, and the ponies are too panicked to be able to do anything about it. Just as Twilight starts to completely lose her mind, she hears a musical procession start up, and at its source is... Pinkie Pie!?

Before she can admonish Pinkie, Twilight notices that the parasprites have become entranced by the music, and begin to fall in line marching behind her. Meeting up with the rest of the team and following Pinkie, Twilight and the others rush ahead to greet the Princess, who just landed outside of town. Celestia is nonplussed to see Pinkie marching with the parasprites behind her, but is touched that they're holding a parade in her honor. Unfortunately, Celestia has to cut her visit short due to some sort of infestation in a nearby town. After Twilight gives her weekly report (that the answer to your problems may come from an unlikely source, even if it doesn't seem to make sense), Celestia heads off. The team checks with Pinkie, who finally tells them that she did know about the parasprites and their weakness to music from the beginning, but no matter how hard she tried to warn everyone, nobody paid attention to her. After Twilight and friends apologize to Pinkie Pie, they all head back to Ponyville victorious.

Cannot Spit It Out: A lot of trouble could have been averted if Pinkie Pie had simply explained why she was looking for musical instruments.

Cartoon Bug-Sprayer: Part of the equipment mustered for the abortive defense of Sweet Apple Acres.

Chekhov's Gun: Applejack's herding skills, though it's not what ultimately solves the problem.

Clueless Aesop: Probably not entirely clueless, but as more than one viewer has noted, the aesop of this episode, if taken as the face value "you should listen to what your friends have to say instead of dismissing them", almost falls flat when one remembers that Pinkie Pie hardly ever actually tried explaining that she knows what parasprites are and how to get rid of them, giving up after one attempted explanation. In particular, Twilight specifically asks Pinkie if she knows anything about the Parasprites, only for Pinkie to mutter that she needs a trombone and leave without explanation. Considering all things, of course, this could more or less lead to a Double Aesop, as Pinkie pointing out at the end how she tried to tell them when they wouldn't listen makes it evident that she did learn the importance of explaining herself properly.

The Cuckoolander Was Right: Pinkie Pie, of all ponies, was the only one in Ponyville who knew of the parasprites, and how best to get rid of them.

Cuteness Proximity: Everyone's first impression (except for Pinkie Pie and Zecora) of the parasprites is to fawn over their adorableness. Even Rainbow Dash goes all girly, basically the only time ever.

Twilight Sparkle: Will you forget about your silly instruments for one second? You're ruining our efforts to save Ponyville. Pinkie Pie: Me? Ruin? I'm not the ruiner, I'm the ruinee! Or is it ruiness? Ruinette?

Dramatic Irony: "No woodland creature is gonna eat the Apple Family's crop!" Oh, Applejack, how right you are. They eat the house instead.

Explosive Breeder: Parasprites are shown to reproduce in a quick and disgusting way. Although Fluttershy only kept one in her house for a few minutes, it was able to produce at least a hundred more.

Fluttershy and Twilight each find parasprites endearing when unaware of the devastation they cause… and even after that, Fluttershy in particular still decides to keep one.

Rarity deserves special mention as well; not only does she not seem particularly freaked out to have so many in her house all of a sudden (although, we never actually see her waking up to them like we did the others) she somehow even gets them to start helping her around the shop. She only stops liking them when she finds out exactly howtheymultiply.

From Bad to Worse: After Twilight's attempt to cast a spell to get the parasprites to stop eating the food in Ponyville, they instead eat everything but the food.

Magical Negro: Subverted wit Zecora. Twilight visits the African-themed zebra for advice. Zecora quickly identifies the name of the troublesome species and, just when it seems like she will reveal a key bit of ancient tribal wisdom, she tells Twilight "...you're doomed".

Naïve Animal Lover: While Fluttershy is usually good at dealing with animals, she becomes this here when she decides to adopt a cute parasprite, which then multiplies and very nearly destroys Ponyville by eating everything (even buildings) in sight.

Twilight Sparkle uses her magic to stop the parasprites from eating all the food in Ponyville. It works, except that the spell makes the parasprites ignore the food and start eating the TOWN instead.

And Fluttershy holding onto just one of the parasprites while Applejack is leading the others out of Ponyville with a cartload of apples. As soon as she opens the door a tidal wave of parasprites come out of her house.

And Rainbow Dash's tornado seems like an effective way to control the parasprites, but Pinkie shows up at the wrong time with a pair of cymbals, which get sucked up and behave as flying buzz-saws, causing Dash to lose control. This in turn results in the tornado flinging the parasprites right into Ponyville.

Poor Communication Kills: Goes both ways here. If Pinkie Pie had bothered to explain more about the parasprites before rushing off to find the instruments from the beginning, or if her friends weren't too caught up in their business to listen to her during the times she did try to explain, the damage wouldn't have been nearly as bad. So infamous that the first episode of Friendship is Witchcraft mined a lot of material out of reversing the dynamic, with Pinkie completely upfront about what she's trying to do while the others insist she's making no sense.

Sanity Slippage: Briefly occurs to Twilight during the climax. May count as Foreshadowing; "Lesson Zero" reveals that Twilight becomes very unstable when faced with the prospect of disappointing Celestia.

Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Pinkie Pie does this twice. First when Twilight won't follow her to get some maracas and a tuba, and again when she finds some tambourines and realizes no one is listening.

Twilight Sparkle: The decorations, the banquet, I really hope everything comes together in time for tomorrow. (Spike and the parasprite are sleeping peacefully) Twilight Sparkle: (yawns) What's there to worry about?

Wingdinglish: Averted with the banner reading "Welcome Princess Celest" in the beginning.

"What Now?" Ending: The Mane Six have this realization when despite driving the parasprites away, the town is still in a huge mess and needs a lot of time to be fixed together again.

You Make Me Sic: Twilight notices that Celestia's name is misspelled on one of the banners (it says "Welcome Princess Celest"). When asked why, Carrot Top replies: "We couldn't fit it all in." Twilight promptly tells her and Berry Punch to take it down, clearly irritating them both.

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